Today’s title has been around for years on tee shirts, postcards, homework assignments…
The current generation – well, everyone alive, I guess – has grown used to the instant gratification of 7-11 stores, on-line banking, emails, txt msg [is that the crect abbrev?], even octogenarians love self-dial telephone calls.
The pros and cons have been debated, sometimes pretty fiercely, and I daresay this will continue.
Even I more often use email than the telephone or the pen and that’s because I know that the people I’m contacting are more likely to respond via the same medium! Damn’ shame we didn’t have email when I was struggling with maths homework and needed to “call a friend!”
So, the quick fix is, for the most part, probably a good thing. But, as with any “good thing” we can sometimes have too much of it.
I was talking recently with some friends about the plethora of cra bad art which seems to be everywhere. Worse, some of this is being taught by people not qualified to teach. People like Ms. Bored Housewife, who, having had ten one-hour lessons on oil painting is offering oil painting courses. A few years ago I worked with a woman who had a sideline in cake decoration. She had followed one recipe in a magazine and had a card pinned to the staff notice board. Not long after, I worked at a major hotel and saw, first-hand, what apprentice pastry chefs had to do. I thought about “Shirley’s Cakes – at fair prices.”
You can’t become an expert, or even “very good” at anything if you don’t practice. It’s the boring repetition that makes most kids chuck their music lessons.
I’ve seen some amazing stand-up comedians and admired them. That’s not for me! I need a script with a good, meaty character. And rehearsals.
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I used to work in a dental practice which did quite a lot of prosthetic work. Some was done in our workroom, but major prostheses were sent to a lab. in the city. I’ve seen some truly hideous dentures (vintage Vulcanite!) and some very good “hardware” as we called it.
But for sheer elegance, have a look at this. I’m not saying I’d like to be an amputee, but I wouldn’ arf like those boots!
http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html
I love her line about Pamela Anderson! If you’ve never come across this woman, you can find her on Wiki.
And, staying with the genius of engineers and sculptors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_Delarozière
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Princesse is just one of many creations. A friend of mine saw this in Liverpool and missed his train back to London because he couldn’t take his eyes off it!
I am so grateful for people like this in our often brutal world. Aren’t you?
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